An Absolutely Terrible Idea
by Wonkington
Summary: Lockwood is known for his bad ideas. Lucy is known for very happily going along with them. (OR: Lucy and Lockwood decide to have a kid. For business reasons, of course).
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Hello, all! This is my first foray into Lockwood & Co fanfiction. If you're one of my Harry Potter fans, highly recommend you read these; you will not be sorry.

Everyone else, do not read past this point unless you have read Book 5 or are okay being spoiled. Some bits also might not make much sense if you haven't. This includes canon-typical horror and dark themes, but with plenty of canon-typical humour as well as fluff and angst and romance. Enjoy.

Note: This takes place around two years after TEG. Lockwood and Lucy are 18-19ish.

**Chapter One**

Like most of Lockwood's ideas, it was a bad one.

Like most of Lockwood's ideas, I was a full and willing participant, despite having more than an inkling that it wouldn't end well.

And like most of Lockwood's ideas, it involved blood, gore, and a great deal of blindingly agonizing pain.

_My_ blood, gore, and blindingly agonizing pain.

It started on a London morning as grey and unwashed as George's underpants, when Lockwood and I were sharing a quiet, companionable breakfast at the kitchen table, spilling bits of egg and toast crumbs over George's message that he'd once more spent a night scouring the sludge of the city with Flo. He would return some hours later reeking of stagnant water and with a dirty backside and mulch in his hair, but he would also be too distracted to notice the odd, quiet mood at 35 Portland Row, or the strange matching flush to both Lockwood's face and my own.

But at that moment, George was still somewhere distant, quite possibly snogging in waist-high waterproof dungarees (a mental image I didn't relish), Holly had taken the day off to visit her mother, and Kipps was elsewhere, taking a brief break from trying to fill in as the pale, living, slightly more socially ept replacement for the Skull. Lockwood was frowning at the side of the box of Holly's low-sugar muesli, and I hummed tunelessly as I dipped a bit of solider in the runny yellow yolk of my soft-boiled egg.

Suddenly, there was a great sucking sound as Lockwood opened his mouth very wide then promptly shut it again over a mouthful of air. I glanced at him sideways. He was still frowning, but no longer at the cereal box, and instead looked very puzzled by the dusty sconce on the kitchen wall.

After some obvious deliberation, he opened his mouth again, and said with charm that-oddly-sounded forced, 'There are very few people more Talented than the two of us, Luce."

"Er." My voice was muffled by egg yolk. Crumbs flew. "I know."

He tapped the dry corner of his now-cold toast against the rim of his plate. "My Sight and your Listening and Touch," he said, increasingly thoughtful. "We are quite the unstoppable team."

I swallowed. "Of course we are," I said, then took another bite, sending a spray of crumbs across Holly's shopping list (kale, sunflower seeds, _soy_ _granules _for goodness sake). He was right, of course; we always had been, even when our teamwork left much to be desired (burning houses to the ground, nearly destroying a large section of London in our attempts to take down Marissa Fittes, etc. etc.), we worked well together. We complemented each other. We were very good at stopping the other from being killed. Hardiness was a sought-after quality in an agency, and no other agency in London had survived what we had been through, nor would they have to, thanks to us.

Lockwood carried on, his normally smooth, unfurrowed forehead looking like a field freshly ploughed. "And George believes that there is a genetic component in Talent," he said. He was speaking very quickly now, as though he thought this a conversation best left to someone else, and was only relaying it out of a sense of duty. "Not always, of course-but that there _is_ a good chance that two parents with psychic abilities will pass those same abilities down to their children."

I gave a little start at the word, _children_. I'd spent my life surrounded by children: agents, the Night's Watch, my sisters. I'd spent my life watching other children die.

"Lockwood?" I said. I wiped my buttery fingers on my leggings. My hands were shaking, and I had a strange, sick, heavy feeling in my stomach, and though the room was warm, it felt very like a ghostly malaise was creeping, prickling, tingling across the floor and tugging hard at every hair on my skin.

Lockwood, for his part, was still making eyes at the ruddy lamp. "The Problem is still a problem, Luce," he said, more quietly now. Finally, he turned to look at me, and there was something quite strange about his eyes-like he had stared into the light for a bit too long, and in place of my face he was seeing something quite a bit brighter and more beautiful than stocky, stern-faced Lucy Carlyle.

"And it could always get worse before it gets better. How many years do we have left, really, before we're like old Kipps? Three? Four?" Lockwood continued. His eyes were still set on me, quite alarmingly now. I'd grown use to these long glances in the past few years. Ever since we'd gone together to the Other Side, when I'd grown white streaks to match the strands of silver in Lockwood's own dark hair. Those brief streaks of monochrome had bound us, as did the sapphire that always rested in the hollow of my neck. Beyond the connection of the Other Side, now shared in small part with George, Holly, and Kipps, we'd been _something_ ever since the day that he gave me his mother's necklace. And as always, it was impossible to pin a name to that _something_. As usual, we hadn't talked about it. We had walked together, alone, long enough where George had begun to make curious and unappetizing noises at our return. We had kissed-more than once. We didn't really talk about that, either.

"We've made a name for ourselves," Lockwood was saying, while I found myself focusing on his lips, remembering the very long, very energetic kiss we'd shared the night before, and forgetting entirely what he was talking about. What was it? Oh, right. Lockwood & Co. Its future. Growing old and watching our Talents crumble but still refusing to stand down, like a middle aged man on a football pitch, pot belly bobbing, chasing a ball around a field and pausing every ten paces to pant over a hitch in his side. Only with ghosts entering the field to play opposition.

What else had Lockwood mentioned?

Oh. Children.

Once again, I listened very intently to what he was saying, my ears hot and my cheeks pink, and low, humming words bubbling at the back of my mind like the distant jeering of a skull in a jar. I often wondered if my Listening skills were slipping now that the Skull was no longer here to test me. Sometimes on cases I had to strain to hear the faintest whispers. I had spent so long assuming that like Marissa Fittes, my Talent would never go. Now, I couldn't be sure. Lockwood had a point.

"But how much longer will we be taken seriously if we're bumbling about London with those goggles strapped to our faces?" Lockwood carried on. He fixed me with that charming smile, and it outshone the sconce by miles. "It would be the end to the Lockwood name, _and_ our reputation."

That smile, for once, did the opposite of calm me. Instead, it made me uneasy, and cautiously curious of what he was trying to talk me into. It also made my thoughts try to veer once more to last night's fumbling below the faux sheepskins in the library.

"We can hire new agents," I replied, turning my attentions once more to my toast and taking aim for my egg with a soldier. I missed.

"And we'd be supervisors," Lockwood said. "We all know what great use they are. And we very well don't need four of them."

"You're not really proposing a solution, Lockwood."

"Am I not?"

I looked up at him, and my toast went very limp in my hand.

He was no longer smiling.

"We need someone with the Lockwood name." His hands were folded neatly in front of him on the kitchen table, the rapier-callous shining dimly in the crook of his thumb. His fingers twitched. "Someone we trust, and someone so Talented the ghosts wouldn't have a chance." He made a sound deep in his chest, something phlegmy, almost a growl. "To hell with Fittes," he said. "I think it's time for a new family enterprise. What do you say, Luce?"

I fixed him with a look that I hoped at the time looked very clever, but most likely resembled the expression of someone who had just been hit round the head with a cricket bat.

I blinked. "Okay," I said.

"Excellent." His chair careened backwards as he exploded from the table. Long fingers unfolded before me, waiting for my hand. "Shall we?"

My blush deepened. "Do you ever need to ask?"

His hair flopped in his eyes. His half-grin was like a ghost light, bright and momentarily blinding.

"I thought it best."

His fingers were surprisingly warm against mine. And a bit unsteady, as though he might be shaking beneath the cool, calm exterior, the cableknit jumper that George's mum had bought him for Christmas, the slim cut trousers that left very little to the imagination.

I hesitated, just briefly. "This could be a bad idea," I said.

His grin widened. "Has it ever stopped us before?"

"Good point," I replied. My chair screeched across the floor. "Let's go."


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

I could put it delicately, but in my seventeen-and-some years on this planet, I have come to the conclusion that I am not, actually, a delicate lady. So I will put it bluntly: I had just got my period. Again.

It was the fifth month I'd looked down as I sat on the toilet and sighed at my pants as they stretched between my knees. I didn't call Lockwood, because I never did. Instead, I went back to my attic room and sat on my bed, legs bent, elbows resting on my kneecaps, hands hanging loosely between my thighs.

Outside, the birds sang. The morning shone with almost aggressive brightness. The ghost-light outside my window had been decommissioned now that most nearby spectres had been eradicated (mostly by a bored Kipps keen to test the longevity of his goggles); ivy grew up the post in snaking tendrils, leaves flicking to and fro in the breeze.

Closer to home, the skull jar sat lifeless on my dusty windowsill as I banged my head back against my bedframe.

"Yeah, yeah, I know," I told the jar. "It was a stupid idea in the first place."

It didn't reply, but it didn't take a genius to know what it would say if it could.

"Has someone broken in again?"

George emerged into the kitchen from the library with his glasses askew and icing sugar in his hair. The sugar could be explained by the small wedge of donut clenched in his left hand. The flush to his cheeks, however, was unexplained, and the sweaty sheen to his face made me immediately uneasy.

Lockwood frowned. "No. Why?"

"My book on fertility rituals in the Near East has gone missing."

Holly giggled quietly from her herb chopping by the fridge. I shot her a look, but she either didn't notice or was avoiding my gaze.

"I really don't think anyone's stolen it, George," Lockwood said, stabbing at a flaxseed pancake with a fork, much more polite toward Holly's attempts at breakfast than I was (as, like George, I was also eating sugared donuts, but from the hollow of my lap while Holly's back was turned).

"It was on the side table yesterday and now it's not," George said.

"I'm not sure why you're so worried about it," I replied, hoping the hotness of my neck didn't give anything away. The book in question-a big, old, heavy volume with daguerreotype asides and plate illustrations was currently wedged beneath a stack of towels in my room.

It was George's own turn to go pink in the ears.

"No reason _particularly_,' he sniffed.

"George has been thumbing certain pages before bed," Lockwood muttered, and Holly choked as she took the chef's knife to a head of lettuce.

"I have been _researching_," George insisted. "And I'm pretty sure that since you two are taking this both so lightly, it's one of you who has it." Lockwood and I avoided meeting eyes and instead both reached for another pancake neither of us wanted. "And further to that question," George pondered, lifting his shirt to scratch at his belly, "…why?"

"Don't look at me," I said.

I've always been a rubbish liar, but the look Lockwood was giving me over the table was making my throat constrict, and my words were emerging with a suspicious creaky quality, like hinges on a door that shouldn't be opened.

"I have little interest in many of your books, George," Lockwood said coolly. His fork scraped against his plate as he took another careful bite of pancake.

"I might have been using it to write on," Holly piped up. "Actually, I think I have…the one with the large woman on the front?"

"That's the one," George said gruffly.

"Sorry," Holly said. She sucked on her thumbnail and went back to chopping. "I think it's in my bag. I'll give it back later."

I frowned. Lockwood tapped a finger against the table. "Fine," George grunted. He vanished, only to be replaced by heavy, shuffling footsteps on the stairs and the sound of his bedroom door slamming shut.

"I'm going to go finish up my paperwork from last night," I said. I stood, making a little basket with my skirt to hold the rest of my donuts.

"And I might go say my hellos to Esmerelda," Lockwood said. "Thank you for breakfast, Holly."

"Yes, thank you," I said.

"Not a problem," Holly replied. A pancake fell apart as she attempted to flip it. It gave me a strange moment of satisfaction to watch her fail at something, and I stayed a few seconds after Lockwood had gone, just to relish her sigh as she tried to meld it back together in the pan.

"Don't worry, Lucy," she suddenly whispered. I jumped-it was like the voice was coming from a ghost in another room. Her back was still turned to me, the spatula worrying at the edges of the doomed pancake. "I won't tell," she said.

There was a pause as I discerned her words, realizing that _it_ was her. That I _wasn't_ imagining things. The long fringe of her eyelashes appeared as she turned toward me, just a fraction, waiting for my reply.

"Tell what?" I asked. My fists clenched and unclenched at my sides.

"Nothing, obviously," she replied. Even with her back turned, it sounded like she was smiling.

"Okay," I said.

I _did_ go to the office, and I _did_ complete my paperwork in three hours rather than one, and I _had_ intended on beating up a dummy downstairs with Lockwood and imagining that it was my stubborn ovaries stuffed with straw, but instead I went back to my room and pulled the book from beneath my bed.

It was thicker than before, with a gap in its most dog-eared pages.

There was another book inside, and one that hadn't been there before.

I pulled it out.

It was a small paperback, staple-bound, with yellow pages and a cover that dated it somewhere before the Problem began. The front image was a badly drawn illustration of a woman holding a baby with a huge head. The back had a crossed-out barcode from a local library that had closed nearly a decade ago.

Tiny sticky notes fluttered at the top edges. The first was larger, bright yellow, and said, _Thought this might be more help. -H 3_

I let out a breath, heart racing, warm and flustered and oddly touched all at once.

The bed creaked beneath me as I lowered myself onto it, and finally settled as I opened the book to the first page. 

#

"Sometimes I forget, I think," Lockwood said.

He was sitting at the end of my bed, my blankets drawn around his hips. He held the skull jar in one hand, peering at the browned bone visible through the cloudy glass.

I, for my part, was on my back, clutching my knees to my chest like it was completely normal and like I was not at all mad.

"What I'm doing," Lockwood said. He slid the jar back onto the windowsill. "Why I'm doing it. I think I might be a little obsessed with the dead."

I gave him a gentle smile. "It's our job, really."

His answering glance was warm. "I know," he said. "It's only…I love this house, but I wouldn't love it nearly as much if it were just me knocking about. It would be rather lonely without George and Holly."

"And me," I corrected him.

"That's a given," he said, his smile so disarming that even _after_ I still wanted to melt into a puddle of goo. "I think focusing on death so much can make someone forget that they're still alive, and the prospect of _creating_ life…I think I've forgotten that it's possible. I hadn't really considered it? I don't know."

"I know what you mean," I said, locking my fingers more firmly around my ankles. I thought of the street, and the clouds of silvery light I no longer saw at the end of the lane, and the ghost fog that no longer choked up the iron chains that lined the nearby cemetery. We'd started this like a business plan, but I knew that Lockwood wasn't the only one beginning to feel, deep down, that the plan was losing its luster. Bringing a child into the world as financial security had made sense at the beginning, but now, we were starting to think like _humans_, like lovers, like..._parents. _"But things _are_ getting better," I said. I released my ankle, and brushed a tender hand across his leg.

"You're right, Luce," Lockwood said. "They _are _getting better."

The covers shifted as he bent down, hovering over me with his side against my thigh, and kissed me. He drew away and pressed his forehead to mine. His breath smelled like my strawberry chap stick.

"I think I'm quite excited," he said.

My heart began beating faster again. "I am, too," I whispered.

"Can I sleep here tonight?" he asked.

I was already scooting over, the narrow bed protesting at our combined weight, but I didn't care a jot.

"You can always sleep here," I replied. I twined my fingers with his. "Though they might start suspecting something."

"I reckon they will eventually." Our twined hands brushed my stomach. He smiled again.

"'Night, Luce," he wished me, his forehead once more pressed to mine.

"'Night," I replied.

Though we didn't sleep for quite some time.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

We would have to tell them.

At some point.

Maybe in six months time.

For now we said nothing. George said nothing. Holly didn't even say anything, and only looked slightly smug when she caught me in the study with the sewing kit, letting out the waistband in my trousers.

Kipps was clueless, as usual. He'd also developed a perturbing habit of locking himself out of the house at inopportune times (3am on our night off, Lockwood in my room with me under the covers) and I'd have to rush to the door, hoping he didn't notice that I was wearing Lockwood's dressing gown.

"You're looking a bit peaky, Carlyle," he said to me one morning when he'd stopped by for breakfast and was flipping delicately through a copy of that week's _London's Weirdest Hauntings_. He glanced at me over the cover (_Possessed Kitten Speaks Pig Latin! Page 13) _and raised an eyebrow. 'Too many donuts?'

"Yeah," agreed George, "didn't want to say anything, Luce, but you are packing it on a bit lately."

"Drop it, you two," demanded Lockwood. "Lucy can be as fat as she wants."

"Oh, stuff it, Lockwood," I snapped, and he pressed his lips together to prevent a smile. "And _you two_, if I hear you comment on any woman's body again I'll feed you to the Limbless Hound in Vauxhall."

"Bit touchy, too," Kipps stage-whispered to George.

"Yeah," said George. "If I didn't know better, I'd think she was preg-"

Conversation ceased. A bit of scrambled egg fell to Kipps's plate. George took his glasses off, rubbed the lens with his shirt, and shoved them back on again. His eyes were very large and blinky as he leaned toward me across the table.

I'm still not sure what gave it away. Maybe the color I felt rising in my cheeks. Perhaps the slight green tinge of my skin at the smell of Kipps's eggs. Or maybe, just maybe, it was Lockwood, finally announcing, as though the words were under severe pressure and sealed with a flimsy lid, "She is!"

Kipps said something unrepeatable. George shouted, "I knew it!", and Lockwood continued grinning as though this had been the plan all along.

"You're both fools," Kipps said.

George nodded. "Utter nincompoops."

Lockwood's famous smile faltered. "I thought you'd congratulate us."

"So it _is _yours," George said, wiping his hands on his grubby t-shirt, as though we were the unclean ones.

"Of course it's his," I grumbled. "Who else would it belong to?"

"My mistake," George said to Lockwood. "I thought you had sense."

"What _is_ your problem, George?"

"_My_ problem?" George stood and once more began wiping his lenses furiously. "_My problem_. _You_" –a chubby finger pointed at Lockwood, then to me- "get _her _pregnant, and you expect me to be absolutely fine with it?"

"We can soundproof the nursery," Lockwood said. His face had become quite concrete, all the premature lines appearing. He suddenly looked very much older than his eighteen years. "I'll be sure it's not an inconvenience to you."

"An inconvenience!" George spat. I then noticed that Kipps had made himself scarce, the coward. "That's what you're worried about, the inconvenience? How many times have you been out on calls in the last few months, Luce? Did you _know_?"

Lockwood and I exchanged glances. I gave a small nod.

"Idiots!" George proclaimed. "Imbeciles!"

"If you could calm down, George, we may discuss this as the adults we are, about to have a child together."

George collapsed in his chair, threw his head back so he was sitting in it nearly diagonally, and gave a deep groan.

"I've heard about this," he told the ceiling. "Girls getting knocked up then heading out on calls. It never ends well."

Lockwood began to say something but George cut him off. I stayed silent, my thumb brushing the slight bulge of my lower belly, harboring the sinking feeling that I knew exactly what he was talking about. I didn't have to think back far, only last week: the Georgian terraced house in Storey's Gate. The Visitor had been a Whig politician long-dead, and had cornered me in the study with a speech so passionate about working mothers that I'd nearly reached for him and the softly glowing buff-coloured ribbon in his insubstancial hand. It was only at the last minute when I remembered that I mistrusted all adults who tried to sell me something and withdrew my rapier, cornering him neatly behind iron filings.

I hadn't told the others. We tried not to discuss politics on Portland Row-Lockwood and Kipps would come to blows. And, well, I didn't want to admit I'd nearly been ghost-touched.

Again.

"What gets stronger when women get pregnant, Lockwood?" George said, confirming the source of my sinking feeling. "The senses, isn't that right?"

"I'm hardly an expert," Lockwood sniffed.

"I'm not either," I said, though I was a bit, if only because Holly had been a never-ending supply of family-planning books, and I'd already nearly finished, _Your Baby, Your Visitors and You_. It wasn't hopeful reading.

"Well, that's what happens." George blinked deeply. "You've already become strongly misled by your Listening before, Lucy. Too emotionally entangled. I reckon things will only get worse from here. You're going on desk duty immediately."

"No!" I protested.

"Lockwood, she's your girlfriend," George beseeched him. He made a rubbery face. "And your employee. And she's carrying your unborn child. Which is all a bit gross, really."

Lockwood's lips pulled sideways in an expression of uncertainty. "Maybe he's right, Luce."

"I'm not your property!"

"Of course you're not." The soothing timber of his voice made me want to punch him. Punch Lockwood, the future father of my children.

Good lord, what was wrong with me—three months gone and I was already thinking of another one.

"I just think," Lockwood whispered, "that maybe George is right."

"That's beautiful," George said, softening. "_George is right. _You really must say that more often."

"You do have a poor history of self-preservation," Lockwood said to me, ignoring George. "And you must remember there are two of you, now."

"Yes, I know, and no, I don't," I protested. "I'm _not_ going on desk duty."

"You are," George said.

I rose from the table, the emotion of one medium person and one very small one filling me with a fury so pure I could light the entire room red.

"No, I am not. No matter how pregnant I am. Leave me behind and _I will end you_."

Lockwood cleared his throat and scooted back from the chair.

"I'll get a spare cushion for the wheely chair," he said.

"Excellent," George said. "I'll help."

And they left me to stare at their empty places across the table.

Cat-like, I slowly pushed Kipps's cooling eggs until they clattered satisfyingly to the floor.

"I'm _not_ over-emotional," I told the empty room, and I squished the eggs beneath my feet until they were but a thin film on the linoleum.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

In response to this unfair ganging-up by my colleagues and the father of my child, I did what any furious pregnant woman would do:

I took a four-hour nap.

When I woke, it was to bad breath, a greyish haze of a rain-soaked afternoon outside my window, and mist on the glass. The skull in its jar stared dully at me with black, empty sockets from the windowsill.

"I know," I said. "You would've warned me. But you're not here, are you?"

I'd spent enough time in its company that I knew very clearly what its reply would have been: it would have made a hideous, convulsing face, a thing of tongue and teeth and eyes where they shouldn't have been, and replied, _Oh, no, I wouldn't have warned you. Finally, Lockwood has succeeded in what I only dreamed of: finally ruining your life._

"Oh, shut up," I said to the lifeless jar.

Of course, the jar did not reply.

I budged up in my bed, testing my limbs for feeling and the presence of slight bulge of my stomach that no longer fit into any of my trousers (still there). Then, just on cue, there was a knock on my door.

A dark flick of hair entered without waiting for my answer.

"Luce," Lockwood said. He had that smile on: the consolatory one, the one that used all his teeth. He'd honed it well in reassuring our clients and Inspector Barnes, but now rarely turned it on me unless it was in attempt to talk me into something or to tape back together the pieces of my fragile ego.

This would be the latter, then.

He cleared the distance from the door to my bed in one step, spotted my face, and rearranged his expression into one of regret; it was the one he wore in the moments before admitting to a client that unfortunately their home had been reduced to a blackened shell, near-leveled by Greek fire.

He lowered himself onto my duvet, narrowly avoiding my legs.

"I know you're upset," he said, patting my stockinged foot as I suppressed the urge to kick him with it. "But George is right, you know that. It would put you in danger, and sometimes it's quite difficult to remember, but it's not _only_ you."

I scowled. "The team," I grumbled.

He sighed. "The baby."

"Oh, yeah, that."

"Yes, that," Lockwood said smartly. He stared across at a damp stain on my wall, which I'd attempted and failed to paste over with a fold-out poster of Lockwood & Co. from a special edition of _The Observer_. Sometimes I imagined what girls who weren't me would pin to their walls; I would think back to my sisters and our shared rooms, but I couldn't imagine anything beyond the tinkling ghost-charms and silver-plate chimes of my childhood.

"The thing is," Lockwood continued, still staring, drawn and pale, at the rakish image of his slightly younger-self: artfully tousled hair, megawatt smile, me and George at his side holding rapiers at jaunty angles, Holly some distance away, like she'd wandered into shot from the fashion shoot next door. "The thing is," he said again, as though the thought hadn't fully formed the first time, "Luce, I've already lost my parents, and my sister, and if something were to happen to my partner _and_ my child…well, I've taken a step back from the brink a bit, haven't I? And…well, I'm not sure I can do that again. And it's not just me, of course not. I care about you greatly. And, well, I believe you _may _have similar feelings for me."

There was a moment's silence. My stomach grumbled; I wasn't sure if I felt nauseated or hungry or both. The sky outside had taken on a sickly color; it made Lockwood look paler than usual.

"Well," I said. "Do you want me to argue or what?"

"No," he said. "I just feel the need to explain myself."

"As my employer?" I asked, drawing my foot away. "Or as my…"

I let the question hang in the air, thin and fragile as spider's silk. What was he, really? He'd called me his partner, but that could mean a lot of things in the realms of business or love. Mother of his child, to continue the Lockwood line? Sure. That had settled with surprisingly easy weight across my shoulders, like he'd asked me to restock the salt bins or help Holly with the washing up. A relationship, though…that was a different creature entirely, with body parts and titles and expectations, and assessing eyes that followed it everywhere.

"I think…" Lockwood said, then paused. He gave my foot another cursory pat and carried on swiftly, "…that maybe we should speak of that later. George must be waiting for me. Off to that Raw-bones case in Lambeth, joy of joys. You should be glad to miss it. See you later, Lucy."

And with that, he was on his feet, his coat over his arm, and tripping down the stairs as though he'd been thrown.

The front door slammed with force below. My curtains fluttered against the milky grey of the growing dark.

The accompanying silence rung, loud and hollow, in my ears.

I eased from my bed. Rubbed at a grease spot on the skull jar with the edge of my sleeve. Then I pulled on my coat and followed after him.

#

I didn't make it far, only to the filing cabinet in the office, which George had left open in his rush to leave, manila folders and paper stuck out from the top like a spray of fancy serviettes. I shoved it closed with my hip and took down the banker's box propped on top. It was full of single sheets of A4.

It was our box of GhostCheck forms. The residential survey sheets had become a legal requirement in the last few years with the downtick of the Problem and the uptick in the number of people living long enough to purchase their first homes; so, too, had grown the public demand for guaranteed ghost-free housing. All agencies had a monthly quota, and as Lockwood & Co. was only small, we had a maximum of ten. Most homes with any obvious hauntings were already down to be seen to by agents in a proper eradication; these were the houses and flats that were caught in the wide-spread net. Ninety-eight percent of these residences were haunted by no more than greasy kitchens and bad taste in soft furnishings. The other one percent: maybe an irritating but harmless Stone-knocker, or maybe a Glimmer (ghost or did someone leave the refrigerator door ajar?). We often split up once a week and went our separate ways, spending a quiet night in with a ghost-lamp, flicking lazily through a magazine and jotting down when we felt a draft. Sometimes we'd all go together for an 'evening in', when we'd grab a few pizzas or a curry and camp on the floor in a suburban lounge, thermometers out and telling jokes by candlelight. As far as we were concerned, the GhostChecks were as close as one could get to desk duty in the field, but it was still a damn sight better than desk duty off of it.

So surely Lockwood and George would have no problem with me doing exactly what George had suggested. And if I cleared the backlog as well? Well, a thank-you card would do nicely, though I'd prefer them to see sense: we were both better served by me going out with them than wasting my night thumbing a copy of _Tattler_ that I'd stolen from the bathroom of an unhaunted newbuild flat.

I grabbed the front-most form and dialed for a night cab to Kensal Green. I may have been pregnant, but I was not an invalid, and I was _not _hysterical.

And by the end of the night, I would prove it to them.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: ****M**ore horror than fluff. More angst than fluff. More anything than fluff. At least for this chapter. More fluff soon. Just a warning that this and the next chapter might be a bit triggering for some. Do proceed with caution.

**Chapter Five**

The owners were home, of course, because where else would they have been after dark? They were a couple in early old age, both steel-haired but at the extreme ends of the spectrum of size: she short, pink-faced, and as round as she was tall, with a chin that flowed into shoulders and with hardly any neck between; he, so pale and elongated that he looked like an old knit tea towel left to dry. They both greeted me with polite smiles as I arrived, clasping hands, offering tea; like most adults, they were never quite sure how to act around agents. I supposed to them we were only reminders of all the things they couldn't see and of childhoods over too quickly.

They had dogs, two of them. Like their owners, they, too, were of extremes: one huge and hairy with brown eyes glinting beneath spidery grey eyebrows, one so small he could have fitted into one of Holly's special occasion handbags. As the humans showed me the kitchen and put the kettle on, the dogs followed me across the sticky linoleum, the large one's nose up my skirt. I shooed them away gently. The woman cleared a spare chair of boxes. I sat and took the GhostCheck form from my bag.

For a couple eager to sell their house, the house itself wasn't holding up its part of the bargain. There was rubbish on every surface, and the hob was buried beneath a pile of cereal boxes. Three assorted brush and dustpan sets stood propped in a corner, dusty with lack of use. Statuettes of the Virgin Mary lined the sideboard; a pile of towels in another corner were hollowed out for a dog bed. The only spot they'd begun to clear were the walls, where the magnolia paint had yellowed with age but for the pale ghosts of removed picture frames.

I cleared a space in a collection of salt shakers and went down the list, ticking boxes off as I went.

"Cold spots?" I asked.

The man answered. "Only by the attic trap door. Insulation's on our to-do list before we sell."

"Neighbors complain of strange noises?"

"No, not at all."

"Any children visit? And if so, have they reported any strange lights or forms in the dark?"

A pause. The woman sipped her tea. "No, sorry."

I smiled at them. "Nothing to be sorry about. That should do. Do you have somewhere to be tonight?"

The woman nodded. "My sister only lives down the road."

They took the dogs. I'd never been crazy about pets—Lockwood said it was my 'hard northern upbringing' that saw animals as food or employees rather than companions, though I wasn't sure if he was winding me up—but as soon as they were out the door, I missed their warm, glint-eyed, panting presence. With a click of finality, I was alone, and the silence pressed in, and I wished that Lockwood, George, and Holly (and even, God help me, Kipps) were there.

"All right, kid," I said aloud to the empty house, my hand pressed gently against the swell of my stomach. "It's you and me."

I set to work. I cleared a space in the center of each room, setting out thin links of iron chain, just in case. I felt no presence here, no hint that there would be something waiting on me come midnight; the thermometer held a steady eighteen degrees. All I saw were dusty, teetering piles of a two joined lifetimes and two spoiled dogs; all I felt was a dusty tickle at the back of my throat and a slight watery prickling to my eyes that made me think my ambivalence was developing into an allergy.

At least I wouldn't lack for something to read. There were stacks of newspapers and magazines as high as my hip piled up in each room. I was glad this place most likely wasn't haunted; if it was, I'd never be able to find the Source. Still, all houses had to be treated the same, and I knew better than anyone that some ghosts could appear without one second of warning.

I couldn't be in every room at once, so I set out some of the old Rotwell Institute tools in each space: the silver bell contraptions suspended by wire and spiders' silk, and a small, battery-powered device that was meant to detect the faintest other-glow. They were both nothing compared to a kid with the slightest blush of talent, but even if their alarm was a late one, I'd still hear it from the safety of the other room, and we could all come back the next night safe in the knowledge that the supposedly ghost-less house was indeed haunted, and with the tools and the team to eradicate it.

When all was done, I sat back in the center of the sitting room floor, the iron chain a broken loop around me, my hands on my knees. Listening.

The TV antenna gleamed in the lantern light. My back smarted as I leaned up against a pile of cardboard boxes. In the past few years I'd had more aches and pains than I thought usual for someone my age, but I blamed the numerous scrapes of agent-hood and my foray into the land of the dead. The slight backache was new, though. The books said it was normal, but it annoyed me; it was just another reminder that Lockwood was right. I wasn't actually alone here.

I waited, checking the thermometer (no change), listening out for sounds on the physical or psychical planes. A knock—next door. Music. A party. People were bolder than they used to be. Adults never would have been caught dead—well, alive—after dark just a few winters ago. Now they were having a right knees-up. Making my job harder.

Still, if there were any manifestations, I'd have a few hours to wait. I busied myself with my set-up, making sure it was perfect. I flipped through magazines from 1982. I tried, and failed, not to think of Lockwood sitting on the end of my bed, when he hadn't slept in it since we found out I was pregnant six weeks ago. _Job done_, I'd thought at the time, but the room felt lonely without him. It had made doubts flare, grow. As I thought about it, I was having a hard time not tearing the fragile pages as I turned them.

Eleven thirty. I closed my eyes, tuned out the noise of the party next door. The music receded. I emptied my thoughts of babies, of Lockwood. Shook off the voices. Reached out with my mind, ears aching, teeth pressed together, tongue to the roof of my mouth. Next door's doorbell rang again. The smell of greasy, garlicy Chinese takeaway drifted through the drafty windows.

I opened my eyes. Squeaked. And ran for the stairs.

I barely made to the bathroom. Whether or not the elderly couple would have noticed an extra addition to their collection, I didn't know, but I didn't fancy the chances of a glowing review getting back to Lockwood & Co. if I'd puked in one of their flower pots. At least the bathroom was relatively clean, with only a cold tile floor and a bath with a clean white shower curtain, and a thick bath mat that was perfect for kneeling on. Once I was finished, I pressed my forehead to the cold cistern, regaining my breath, testing my stomach for stability. Success, all steady.

I turned to the sink, bath mat spinning beneath me.

I froze, cold creeping over me, a ghostly, uneasy malaise.

I was not alone.

I stopped, half-kneeling on the white tile floor. The shower curtain was partially drawn, and in the dim light of the lantern I'd left on the landing, the hollow of the bath was ringed with darkness.

Still, that was nothing compared to the darkness of the shape inside.

My eyes strained to see it, as black and lacking of light as it was. What I could see, I could tell it was a small thing, and writhing. Minuscule limbs—hands, feet—flailed as though shaking off cobwebs with pitiful, jerking movements. Up, down, up, down. Two tiny, grasping shadows reached into the light from the dark. My breath staid in my lungs. _It_—this _thing-_was pathetic, helpless. My heart ached from its position above my sore stomach. My sour breath clouded in the lantern light.

I said nothing. I watched the shadow, unable to move. It didn't stray from its spot—not toward me, not away. I could feel it, though, what I couldn't see. Spite and hunger, a venomous _hum. _Such desolation. Such need.

Careful, careful, I reached for my rapier at my hip. The shadow lurched, retreated toward the bottom of the tub.

I let go. "Wait!" I cried.

I didn't move forward, but the shadow eased back, filling the bath like thick black tar. My eyes strained in the darkness. There was no other-light, no hint of a ghost other than the sudden drop of temperature, ice beading on the hairs on my hands. I was too close, only a few feet away. A sour stench still stung my nostrils, but I didn't think it was me. It was too tangy, too rich. It smelled like the Red Room at Coombe Carey Hall. It smelled like—

"Who are you?" I whispered. My voice rustled back to me across the tiles. "Tell me what you want. I'm listening. I can hear you."

There: so distant it felt like spider's legs skittling across the back of my mind. Like the mewl of a stray cat, badly wanting inside:

A newborn baby's helpless cry.

My heart quickened. My mouth went dry.

"Are you hungry?" I asked. "Sick? What happened to you? I can help you. Please, tell me what you want." My heart ached with sadness for it, the poor writhing form. My hands itched to reach out, to clasp it to me, to give it some comfort. It was so small, so angry. Humming with need. It must be so cold. It must want so badly.

Thoughts drifted, unbidden, to the forefront of my mind: me as a little girl, my own mother cool and distant, her industrial scent of laundry powder. Standing with my sisters as we watched her go to work, her skirts turning about her ankles as she stepped through the door. She'd not bottle-fed us, my older sister said, but only because she could feed us for free. She'd weened us early off her milk, and even earlier off her affection. I had her to thank for where I was now. She'd made me grow up fast.

I rarely thought of my mother those days; she was as remote to me as if she was already in the ground. But a thread of cruelty and a bitterness I'd long ignored was pulling tight across my thoughts, raising furious goosebumps on my frozen skin. It wasn't _fair_. It wasn't _right_. How dare she abandon me? How dare she leave me to be brought up by my sisters? How dare she send me off as a child of eight to earn my own bread, and to be murdered by ghosts if I set one small foot on the wrong patch of ground? I wasn't going to be that person. I wasn't going to be that mother.

The baby continued to cry, louder now, more persistent, echoing off the tile, ringing in my ears and making them hurt. Its threads of shadow twisted, curled in on themselves in the depth of the bath. It was cold. So cold. Ice crusted the tap; frozen droplets hung from the spout. Frost shivered across the plastic curtain. How long had it been waiting here, waiting for something to hold it, comfort it? How long had it been crying for its mother?

I reached out a hand. Rime blushed across my fingertips.

The crying ceased.

I looked up, around, down at the bath. My breath still fogged the air, obscured my sight.

When it cleared, the shape was still there.

Two eyes stared at me from the pool of darkness: cold and crystal blue.

A soft sound. A burbling. A silenced cry.

A tiny hand, unfurling wisps of black reaching toward me, only an inch away from my fingertips.

"No!" I cried, and with agent-reflexes and a handy canister at my belt, salt and iron filings exploded across the tidy bathroom. They landed, smoking gently, lighting up the black substance in the bath with pooling sparks of flame, like oil being set alight.

I staggered forward on my knees, grabbed the bath to steady myself.

Visions flashed across my mind. Sounds spiraled in my ears: a scream, high and distant. A woman's. Not here, not mine, but years ago. The tang in the air. Blood, spreading through water. Crying, so much crying.

I let go. My fingers flexed, unfrozen by a sudden rush of warmth. I blinked. The blackness had gone. The hollow feeling remained, ringing inside my chest like I'd been emptied and filled with the heaviest sort of sadness.

There—a faint trail of blueish other-light, sinking through the drain. I rushed to my feet, wavered. Tore out into the hall. Carpet bunched beneath my feet. Magazines tottered, went sliding down the stairs. Vases followed, smashing across the steps. I slid down the first few stairs, stepped on a magazine, nearly fell down the remainder. I grabbed the banister, righted myself, and sprinted the rest of the way.

I arrived downstairs, breathing hard, eyes searching the ceiling for faint light. The malaise hadn't lifted. Down here, it was still cold; the hairs on my skin rose with it. It hadn't gone far.

I drew my rapier and stepped carefully forward. I was close, I knew it. I felt the pressure in my ears. The impression of _something_ on the back of my eyes, something I might see if I had better Sight. It didn't feel like a child anymore. It felt like something standing in the shadows, thin and hungry and in pain. Watching me in the dark. Waiting for me to come close.

"I'm sorry about what happened to you," I said to the house. In answer, magazines slid down the steps behind me. "I really am. I'm trying to help you." I had no idea what _had _happened, nothing beyond a woman's keening and the stink of blood, but I had some terrible, disquieting idea. Whether it was woman or child luring me in, I didn't know. It could have been either. I thought of the Victorian woman at the Thames, the twin ghosts of mother and child. This, though, was more malevolent. I could taste its anger and despair.

I stepped into the kitchen. Blackness pressed in from all sides. I didn't need a thermometer to feel the temperature drop. The darkness was oppressive; it made my eyes hurt. I could feel it watching, waiting, ghostly breath creeping across the distance between us, somewhere above.

"I'm here to put you at rest."

There: a _pop_. The other-light was there, slowly sinking down the exposed pipes that ran from ceiling to floor along one wall. It sank, sluggish, like a stubborn clog.

It reached the floor, hovered there. I clutched my rapier, waiting for it to burst, waiting for it to reach for me, cling to me.

But it didn't. It just settled, as though sated, and stilled in the dogs' nest of towels and mats.

The light faded. Pressure lessened and my ears popped. Noise returned—the thudding of music from next door.

I breathed out. Took out my silver net, and flung it casually over the dog bed in the corner.

I thought of the blood, the bath. I nudged my stomach, testing it, heart beating hard with panic. _Still there_.

Then I set my teeth, stared down at the towels and the ghost trapped inside. Upstairs, the silver bell began ringing, and the battery alarm in the sitting room began to chime.

I swore.

Lockwood was _not_ going to be happy about this.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: **Thank you for your reviews. They keep me going on this story (which is turning out much longer than originally intended).

**C/W:** References to pregnancy loss (not Lucy's).

**Chapter 6**

The couple were not happy when they arrived early in the morning to find me still there, magazines and pottery shards scattered across the hallway, me packing away my kit, and the unsigned GhostCheck form sitting in the cleared space on the kitchen table.

"We're not haunted," the man insisted, arms loose at his sides in exasperation, as I coiled the remainder of my iron chains away. "We've never felt anything. None of our guests have felt anything."

"Don't suppose you have an en suite?" I asked brightly, smiling as always. No point in getting grumpy with clients, especially when they hadn't yet paid.

"No," the woman said.

"And you shower?"

The woman shuddered, reddened, as if offended that their housekeeping would suggest otherwise. "Of course we do."

"Then maybe the ghost didn't want you."

The man pressed his fingers to his chest as though he was trying to keep from crossing himself. "What _was _it?"

"Not sure," I said honestly. "Not one I'd seen before. I'll have to consult my colleagues and see if they've heard of anything like this." _Fat chance I'm breathing a word of this to them_. "I think it's gone, but we'll need to return another night to make sure there's nothing else lurking."

"How do we know you're not just having us on?" the man asked, suspicious now; where his wife grew redder the more I spoke, he only grew paler, as though his own blood was seeping from him. "You could be lying, trying to squeeze more money from us. You building surveyors are all the same."

"Right-o," I said brightly. "I'll just remove my silver-net and be on my way—"

"No!" the woman exclaimed.

My hand stilled over the netted towels. I withdrew it. "What happened?" I asked, more gently now, crossing my arms across my chest. "Who was she?"

In the corner, the large dog pawed at a remaining towel, creating a new hollow for itself. Before me, the couple exchanged sad-eyed glances, pulled out their chairs, and began.

#

A trip to the newly independent furnaces formerly known as Fittes ensued. I arrived home just before eight, when the sun had risen over 35 Portland Row and the rain had eased away in favor of a fine, almost spring-ish morning. I'd asked the cab to drop me a few streets down so I could stop by Arif's for iced buns. They were still warm as I juggled them to take out my keys. I was cheerful, energy and positivity restored. I had proved myself, and solved a case—accidentally even—just as well as any of my colleagues. Sure, I'd almost been ghost-touched, but that was proving itself quite normal these days, and _almost_ wasn't _was_. I was _not_ a liability. I was—

"Lucy?" The door had jerked open before I could slot my key into the lock. In the doorway stood Lockwood: tall, handsome, still in his coat, which gently smoked with ectoplasm. He, evidently, had just got home himself.

His face, however, was not as cheerful as I felt. Not even close.

"Good, you're here," he said. His tone was measured, his expression careful and dangerously impassive. He gestured me inside with elegant fingers. "I think we need to talk."

#

It was their daughter, the old couple told me with folded hands and dour expressions, heads near-hidden by the junk littering their table. She was a disappointment, an embarrassment to them. She'd had some psychic ability, or so she'd said to them throughout her many wayward years; she could have been making it up—pretending she was spotting Spectres on the street, or a faint glow in the window across the road—how would they ever know? She was of reasonable prettiness and of stoic moods. And due to this (among so many reasons!), they were never sure whether or not they could trust her. She was often suspiciously quiet, strangely stiff-lipped. She never told them what she was up to, refusing to hand over the names of the people she was seeing. She would be out late with the Nightwatch kids (I held my tongue to keep from snapping at them that being out late was the Nightwatch's job). She would come in at the wee hours, and they would have trouble rousing her from her bed in the morning. At breakfast, she would pick at her eggs and toast, and casually mention but never in detail the many ghosts she'd seen in the night.

Then one morning, of course (as though it was inevitable), she came home in tears. She'd been acting strange lately, they said. Moody and hungry and sick. Part of growing up, they'd thought. It was her father that began to suspect something when she started wearing old jerseys she'd bought from a charity shop and had stopped drinking tea. They carried on, though, ears shut and eyes closed to any hint of impropriety—any sign that their daughter was truly more wayward than they'd feared.

It happened when they weren't home. It was an afternoon five years ago, when they'd gone to a ruby wedding party at an upscale tea rooms in the city. They'd come home at a respectable hour, dodging their boxes, hanging their coats on the stair bannister, and froze:

There were bloody footprints on the floor.

They started at the upper step, pointing downward. They were delicately shaped and a familiar size, and the blood was thinned and beaded with water.

At first they thought it might be a manifestation, a ghost come to join the rubble of their lives, but as they went into the kitchen, they found it was worse than they'd feared. There: their daughter, a tangle of long limbs and pale skin and wet, red hair, curled into a ball on the floor; in her arms, a dead thing of her flesh, wrapped in towels drenched with blood.

"He died," she told them in a whisper. "He came out dead in the bath."

They buried him in the garden, under the patio set. The towels were washed and added to the dog's nest in the corner; after all, wastefulness with sinfulness. The girl? Gone. She left the next day. The next time they heard of her, it was that she'd died in a bedsit in Manchester. They didn't know how; they didn't ask. My best guess was that it was probably her ghost that remained, tethered to those rust-stained towels. I couldn't have blamed her for haunting the place, but I questioned the target of her anger. Why have a go at me when she had two useless parents already there, pinched, judgmental faces just longing to be ghost-punched?

"Have a nice evening stroll, Luce?" George asked me, rousing me from my thoughts as I settled back in my desk chair, the fit a bit closer than it used to be (thank you, hips—always ready to take one for the team). "You were out for a while."

"Yes," I said. "I went out to buy buns."

"Sure," George said through a mouthful. "Buns. And I'm the one who left the GhostCheck file open on my desk and ate all of the custard creams."

"You _did_ eat all the custard creams."

"So you _did_ leave out the GhostCheck file!" George flipped open a notebook. Holly's tidy handwriting was recognizable from across the room. "Judging by Holly's index here—Kensal Green. If you'd not found anything, you would have been home hours ago. So what was it?"

The office door clicked shut. Lockwood appeared with a large mug of tea.

"Yes, Lucy," he said calmly, dark eyes set on me, mouth firm. "What was it?"

He bypassed my outstretched hand and handed the tea to George. On my desk, he set a glass bottle of water.

"I…" I looked between them, my two partners. George, eyes gleaming intelligently from a backdrop of badly-shaven boy-beard and specks of almond icing; Lockwood, face as hard and unreadable as a marble bust. "I don't know," I said. "But it's gone now. I took it to the furnace. It was just a GhostCheck. Low risk. Why are you angry with me?"

"Angry?" George said blankly. He threw his glasses on the desk with surprising ferocity. "I'm furious. You, Lockwood?"

"Irritated, yes," he agreed. "We talked about this, Luce."

"Yes," I said, "so I came to the logical conclusion."

"And how did that logical conclusion go, Lucy?" George asked.

"I—" I stopped, the rest of any answer I could form bitten short. I groped for an iced bun and bit off the end, chomped it vigorously. "Fine," I said. I turned to Lockwood. "You look in worse shape than me."

"Yes," Lockwood agreed flintily. His coat was still quietly smoldering. The flecks of white in his hair had multiplied under a soft cloud of magnesium ash. "Close call with that Raw-bones. One of the Nightswatch Sensitives said it had a tell—a sloshing sound along the stone whenever it came close. Of course, none of us could hear it. It'd have gone a lot better with you there, Luce."

I looked between them, at the matching, conflicted expressions in their eyes, their set jaws, their resolve that I shouldn't win this. All the while, my heart began racing with a strange vein of nausea—I guessed this might be how I now felt excitement.

"You need me," I said. I tried not to grin in triumph. My plan, however badly it had been executed, had worked. Sort of. "You can't leave me here. You'll die without me."

"It looks that way, yes," George said. "Or at least the odds increase considerably."

"And you obviously can't be trusted to stay home alone," Lockwood said. "So it looks like we might have to rethink current arrangements. But here. Without judgement—" He leaned back against his chair, crossing his long legs, gazing at me with such assessment that I felt as though I'd just stripped off my clothes and begun to do a little dance. "—tell us what you saw tonight."

I sighed. Took another bun. Then I told them.

Lockwood's mood didn't improve; despite his claim to calm, he looked to be rethinking the conclusion he'd just drawn about their safety without me. George, on the contrary, leaned forward across his desk, fury set aside for scientific interest as he scrubbed his glasses with the hem of shirt, revealing more pale, hairy belly than was advisable among a supposedly delicate pregnant woman.

"That's fascinating stuff," George breathed. "So no one else has ever seen it, but a knocked up girl comes in and—"

"You're particularly vulnerable right now," Lockwood said coolly, still hiding under some semblance of impartiality. "It must have felt that."

I scoffed. "Her parents are the ones who practically murdered her. She should have gone after them."

"But it didn't," Lockwood said. "It went after you."

With that, Lockwood seemed to have decided something. He flew from his chair, spouting off directions at a rapid pace.

"Lucy will come with us," he said, "under heavy guard. Circle of heavy iron chains, feather cloak, the works. The skull too, if it ever decides to make its grand re-entrance. Sword for unexpected moments of self-defence _only._ No leaving the circle, not even to save us. Got it, Luce?"

I pulled myself to my feet, rounded my desk. My face was reddening. My heart was pounding in my ears. "You have to trust me!"

"I _do_ trust you!" Lockwood replied, approaching me swiftly, long coat flourishing behind him. "That's the problem. I trust that the moment you think I'm done for, you'll step in and save the day!"

"Because I don't want you to die!"

"And I don't want you to die, either!"

"At least you two have something in common." At his desk, George was regarding us calmly and rolling back toward the window on unoiled, squeaking wheels.

I realized with sudden, nauseating alarm that he had not been wearing any trousers, and instead was sporting a baggy, ragged pair of blue-striped underpants pulled high over plump, white thighs. I stifled a gag and looked away.

"The thing is," George continued, "that you two are going to start snogging soon, and I'd rather be out of the room before I have to buy more iced buns to make up for the ones I'm about to suddenly lose. Excuse me."

With an extended time of awkward, squeaking wheels, George rounded the desk, rolled across the floor with brief bursts of effort, out of the office, and shut the door behind him.

Lockwood stared at me. I stared at him. We were both breathing hard.

Was George right? _Was_ he going to snog me? I didn't feel particularly snoggable. No, I felt bloated and puffy and a bit grimy, and I hadn't slept all night. Still, I wasn't sure. His eyes didn't know where to settle. My lips, my eyes, somewhere over my right shoulder. His hands were halfhearted fists at his sides.

When he spoke, his voice was low and considered. "You asked me a question yesterday, Luce," he said. "One I didn't answer."

I frowned at him. "No, I didn't."

"Yes, you did," he said. He sighed and swept hair back from his forehead. A brief, white smile made an appearance. "Well, almost."

I didn't say anything. Lockwood rounded me and leaned against my desk, hands braced against the edge of the wood, legs at an angle before him. I stood there in the center of the office, cross-armed and dry-mouthed.

"This is hard for me," he said.

_Yes_, the skull said from deep in my sub-conscious. _It must be, suffering from such emotional constipation_.

"I guess it's kind of weird," I said.

"Kind of?" Lockwood said with a raised eyebrow. "It shouldn't be. I don't know, Luce…maybe it stems from not having grown up with parents—"

_Here we go, playing the orphan card again. _

"—and so I never got to see what a couple was really like. So when I try to remind myself that you're not just an agent, but my agent…with benefits…" He stopped, scowling and frustrated. "This isn't coming out right."

"No, it's not," I said stonily.

"So," Lockwood said, face reddening. "What I was _going_ to say, before you stomped off on that GhostCheck that you _definitely shouldn't have gone on_, that in a few months you're going to find it really tiring to climb all those stairs to your room, and you're not going to fit very easily in that titchy shower, and…well."

_Calm, Lucy. He's going to ask if you'd like to kip in the spare room. He's not going to tell you that he loves you. He'd explode first._

"…you wanted to move in with me."

My heart was suddenly beating in my head. My hands were clammy. I felt as though I'd been ghost-locked.

Still, I managed to speak.

"Are you serious?" I asked.

Lockwood broke into a sudden, blinding smile, both happiness and relief.

"I'm just embarrassed I didn't ask you sooner."

I took a step forward, all my anger and concern slipping away. So what if he'd never told me he loved me? So what if he substituted for affection pretty necklaces and a sock drawer just for me? I grinned back at him, a little emotional, a little tearful. If this was all some ploy to make me not be angry with him? It was working.

"Your bed _is_ really comfortable."

He took my hand. His other found my waist and slipped across my back. My knees pressed against his legs.

"You're sure," I said.

He nodded, grin not budging. "Deathly."

I slid closer.

A few minutes later, the door behind me creaked open. There were gagging sounds. It swiftly slammed closed again.

I pulled reluctantly away.

"I'll get my stuff," I told Lockwood.

"Great," he said. His face was in high color, his hair standing on end. He was panting. "I'll help you."

#

We didn't tell the others—they'd figure it out soon enough. Lockwood made room for my skirts in his wardrobe, and moved his ties so I wouldn't need to bend to retrieve my socks. The rest of my things, deemed unimportant, were shoved in boxes beneath the bed. The skull was left upstairs for the moment—as lifeless as it was, it hadn't been invited.

We went out at seven, wrapped up a quick case with a Shade in Wimbledon, were home by midnight, George grumpily dragging all the extra iron chains they'd used to guard me. I was useless, but I was happy to be with them.

Then we all went our separate ways—George to his room, Holly to the office to fill out forms before retiring to the spare room for the night, me to mine, Lockwood to ours. A few minutes later, when all was quiet, I crept back down from the attic and opened Lockwood's door to find him waiting for me, his bedside lamp still on.

His grin lit up the rest of the room.

Some time later, when all was quiet and I was drifting in and out of strange, grey, north-tinged dreams, there was a gentle knock on the door.

I rolled over, nearly elbowing Lockwood in the eye. He didn't notice. He continued sleeping, breathing quiet and low.

There was an urgent whisper on the other side of the door.

Holly.

_"Lucy," _she hissed. "_It's me. Are you decent_?"

I went to the door in Lockwood's dressing gown. Slipped the door open. I didn't need to ask Holly how she knew I'd be here, though I was disappointed to see she didn't look pleased with herself in the dim light of the corridor. Instead, she looked drawn, and a little bit ashen.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"You have a phone call," Holly whispered. She looked to the stairs, as though she was expecting the phone to have sprouted legs and come after her.

"Now?" I asked, annoyed. "Can you ask them to call back in the morning?"

Holly grew even paler. With her next whispered words, I understood why:

"It's from your mother."


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

My trip to the office was both very quiet and very lonely. The house was silent but for ticking clocks, dark but for the crystal skull lamp and the desk light on in the office. There the telephone sat off its hook. A faint strain of tinny humming buzzed from the receiver.

I picked it up like it was an unsecured source. Held it to my ear.

My voice was like a little girl's.

"Hello?"

A familiar, raspy voice said from the other end, "Lucy?"

My mother didn't own a telephone. We'd never had one. It wasn't unusual where I'd grown up—despite my protestations that my northern town was just as glamorous and cosmopolitan as London, certain things were regarded as luxuries we couldn't afford. Oranges, telephones, affection. If we needed to ring someone, we'd walk to the red phone box two streets down—or at least we had, until old Mrs. Pitts died in it and it had to be chopped up and sent to the furnaces. A replacement had taken three months to arrive.

"Mam?" I said. "Hi."

Pause. Breathing. I imagined her out in the lit-up phone box in her dressing gown and slippers, her greying hair up in curlers beneath a plastic cap, the flash of the ghost-lamps lighting her up with brilliant bright light every few seconds. She'd never gone out in the night before, back when I lived with her. Mary had said the Problem was easing up there, and that ghosts were no longer spotted wandering the street after dark. For my mother to brave the night, it must have been all but eradicated.

"How are you?" I asked.

Another pause. I wondered if my voice was taking a few moments to travel to her.

"I found your letter to Mary," my mother said at last. Her voice was stretched thin, a bit compacted, like she was squeezing it down the line.

"Oh," I said.

Another silence, which I filled with instant regret. I'd written to my sister early on, when I needed to tell _someone _other than Lockwood. Mary's response had been cheerful but guarded. She'd warned me not to tell our mother until I had wedding pictures to show for her it—then apparently she'd left my letter our where all and sundry could see it. _Thanks, Mary_.

"Are you expecting congratulations, then?" my mother asked.

"Mam," I said. "It's one o'clock in the morning."

She ignored me. "You're eighteen," she said.

"You were seventeen when you had Jane."

"Yes," she said, "and look how well that turned out for me."

"I have Talent, mam—"

"So did I, remember? Now look at me." There was a huff, a groan. I imagined her shuffling her slippers across the metal floor. Her voice was brittle with bitter disappointment. "Lucy, I had such high hopes for you."

"Mam, you've _seen_ the papers, haven't you? Pretty sure we did a story for _The Chronicle_—"

"Yes, I've seen." Another pause. I didn't often speak with my mother, even when I was home; these might have been the most words she'd spoken directly to me in one conversation in my life. "That Lockwood of yours is very handsome. Though I think someone tinkered with the smile on this end."

"Yes," I said. "He is very handsome."

"He has no scruples of chucking you out of your own agency, though, does he?"

"Mam, that was _my_ choice. And I've been back for years now. I—I'm _not_ leaving."

"You can't trust men, Lucy," she whispered. Then, on the next breath, she said, "I'll be waiting for my invitation to the wedding."

I clenched my teeth. Reddened. Even if that _did_ happen someday—and I had strong doubts—I knew she wouldn't come.

"Sure, mam," I said.

"_Yes, mam," _she corrected me.

"Yes, mam," I said.

"Good night, Lucy."

"Good night, mam."

I hung up the phone, and jumped to find Lockwood in the doorway, tousle-haired and half-asleep and wearing a shirt back-to-front.

"Who was that?" he asked me groggily. "Do we have a client?"

"No," I said. "It was my mother."

"Really?" he asked, tired eyes widening. "What did she want?"

_You as a son-in-law. _

I smiled at him. "Just to question my life choices," I said. I held out my hand and smiled brightly, even though the conversation still bubbled like acid at the back of my mind. "Let's go back to bed."

#

I'd like to say things got easier from here. In some ways they did. Lockwood and I were living our homey domestic life in a shared room. Holly did cheerful, efficient things with wallpaper and silver mobiles to make the spare room into a nursery. George, even, had come around, and had thrown himself into a series of parenting books with the same fervor with which he usually dedicated to solving the Problem. This almost resulted in a nervous breakdown, but that was one burden I was glad I no longer had to carry. George could do my worrying for me.

I had to bear the brunt of heavier judgments.

It was becoming impossible to hide. At four months, I no longer looked as though I'd just smuggled a few too many biscuits from the tray. At five, I felt huge. "Four more to go!" George told me cheerfully, marking it off on the thinking cloth. I'd thrown my pancake at him and missed; it lodged on the wall sconce that had apparently once inspired Lockwood to think up this idea in the first place.

I couldn't imagine what else had moved him. We may have been sharing a bed (and the certain…things that came along with that, despite my hugeness), but I was precisely what he had once let slip out. An agent with benefits. I wasn't really expecting flowers and nice evenings out at the West End. I should have been happy with the sapphire at my throat and his kid knocking things over and getting in my way. But would it kill him to hold my hand in the back of a night cab? I tried not to let my mother get to me, but I couldn't help but let her judgement bubble away at the back of my thoughts, jostling for attention with the skull's jeering. _I thought you were going to be a mother, not a brood mare_.

It was all very well for Lockwood. He could leave the house and no one would know he was about to become a parent at the age of eighteen (unless he told them, which, to his credit, he did sometimes—and with particular vehemence to a horrified Detective Barnes).

I didn't have any such luck.

There were whispers. Stares. Clients frowned at me during first meetings in our office. There were pitying looks in the street. Nightswatch kids laughed at me when I got stuck in a turnstile at the Angel underground station. Smiling strangers came up to me and rubbed my belly in Arif's shop.

I was still damn good at my job. I heard things that were just faint scratches in other Sensitives' ears. But it didn't help when I fell asleep against the donut cushion in my nest of iron chains and woke just in time to catch Kipps running by with his trousers on fire.

Things were going just about how you'd expect, then.

Six months, seven, eight. I felt like an aircraft carrier trying to navigate the Hackney Canal. Still, it would be over soon.

And that was the scariest thing of all.

You know me. I've been terrified plenty of times in my life. It's part of my job. But ghost-lock? Malaise? That shadow scuttling on all fours through Aickmere Brothers department store? They had nothing on the sheer terror of looking down in a failed attempt to see my feet and realizing that what was in there would have to come out of me.

It wasn't just the blood and the gore and the pain. I was used to that. It was the baby itself. The small, pathetic, mewling thing that would have me as a mother. I'd promised myself—hell, I'd even promised that bloody ghost-baby in the bath—that I wouldn't be my own mother. I wouldn't spend my affection and energies on other things and have nothing left to give my child. I would stop calling it an _it_. It was a girl, I decided. A little girl with my Listening and Lockwood's Sight and smile. _That_ made me feel a bit better. It made Lockwood grin, too, and brought strange light to his eyes when he felt her kick.

Eight and a half months. I started having pains. The midwife—a small, hunched woman with eyes so large and protuberant that she looked like she was permanently kitted out in Kipps's goggles—told me it was nothing to worry about, and it was just for practice. Then she'd left in a hurry when she'd spotted the skull jar on the kitchen worktop—even burnt and dead and brown, I guessed it still had that particular talent.

One week left.

I was fine, really. Sure, Lockwood was a bit more harried than usual, and had set off a few more magnesium flares than was advisable in enclosed spaces. Yes, George had spent the past two weeks Sellotaping bubble wrap to every sharp corner in the house. Yes, Holly and her girlfriend had taken me out for a girls' spa day for "one last hurrah"—as though it wasn't also my first. I'd stopped being able to go with them on cases; I'd officially passed from asset to liability, and I couldn't stay awake past nine to literally save my life.

Then, with three days to go until my due date ("No sign yet," the midwife had advised me that morning), we received a phone call at four o'clock in the afternoon. This in itself was no great surprise—we received so many these days we often just let them go to our brand new answering machine for Holly to pick through later. We'd been turning more down, lately, as well. Lockwood didn't want to leave me on my own, no matter my protestations.

But then there was _that_ phone call.

George, Lockwood and I were all in the office, doing various amounts of paperwork and sharing biscuits and decaf tea. George answered. We ignored him at first, knowing the usual spiel by heart. Then George began to take notes. Then began to make a series of strange, excited noises. By this time, we were all watching him, his pencil moving across his ragged notebook so quickly that it almost began to smoke.

"Yes, yes," he said hurriedly. "We'll be there straightaway."

He hung up. Looked at us, blinking ferociously through suddenly fogged-up glasses.

"What's happened?" Lockwood asked.

"There's a ghost on Wigmore Street."

"Okay," Lockwood said. He waited. George said nothing. "…So?"

"Now." George blinked. Took off his glasses. Rubbed them.

I frowned and looked outside. It was a furiously bright afternoon. Birds were singing. The apple tree was flowering. The sun shone down, bright and astringent to any ghost that chanced to wander.

Lockwood stood. "_How?_"

"I don't know," George said. "But I think we should go."

They stopped. Necks craned as they turned to look to me.

I stared back at them.

"I'm not even sure I can get out of this chair," I told them.

"I'm not sure we should leave you, Luce," Lockwood said, expression contorted as he attempted to tear himself mentally in two.

"I'll be fine," I said. Deep inside, something twanged. "Go."

"I don't know…" George said, though it looked as though the words physically pained him.

"_Go,_" I urged them.

I followed them to the door at a waddling clip. Waved them off with a tea towel like a housewife waving her boys off to war.

Then I shut the door, went to the kitchen, put the kettle on. I even turned the wireless on, and busied myself making dinner I could stick in the fridge to cook later. Whether it would edible or not, I couldn't promise, but it kept my mind off the strange sensations twinging deep inside of me, and the little bloom of hurt that they'd listened and gone off without me.

Then I went to my old room. Even now, I couldn't tell you why, except that maybe deep down I understood why animals crawled off into bushes to die. There were only a few of my old belongings jockeying for space with general household detritus: the fold-out poster, my outgrown shirts, some of Lockwood's parents' old knickknacks that George deemed too sharp for babies. And there: the skull in the jar, taking in the falling night with a faded, greenish glow.

I leaned against the wall. Something _twanged_ again, and I had the strangest sensation that I was suddenly in need of a fresh pair of leggings.

I looked down.

"Oh," I said, realizing very quickly what had actually happened.

Then I cursed so strongly I could have summoned demons.

Something green flared on the windowsill. I blinked, clenched, in pain and momentarily blinded.

In the jar, green ghost-fog parted to reveal a grinning, terrible, wonderful face.

"_Good evening," _the skull said. "_You called?_"


	8. Chapter 8

A/N: Is it getting fluffy in here or is it just me?

**Chapter 8**

The skull had been subject to more experiments in the past year than it had been before I joined the agency. I should have been sorry for it, because it was my fault. I tried not to let it bother me that my ghostly companion had vanished directly after saving my life. I tried not to feel too guilty. But for all those distracting walks and shared smiles with Lockwood and the pressure of a thousand secrets about the nature of The Problem we had to keep in the confines of 35 Portland Row…well, the skull's departure still managed to bother me. It was those quiet in-between moments, the times I'd find myself looking up at the windowsill for a snarky comment. It was almost like a friend had died.

I'd always hoped it'd come back. The others noticed my sadness. George did some unspeakable things from books we shouldn't have had that were meant to turn simple objects into Sources. They didn't work. Finally, as a safety measure, George suggested placing the blackened bones into a new silver glass jar in one last hope that being back in that twilit place would provide a corridor back to our world.

I agreed, even though I knew, if the ghost ever _did_ come back, that it wouldn't be happy.

Wouldn't you know it? I was right.

"Why," it intoned, "_am I back in the jar_?"

Light pushed against the glass, fizzing like rapidly expanding foam. The skull's voice stretched to fill my brain.

"What?" I hissed through my teeth. My head jerked toward the windowsill and the haze of mist fogging the inside of the silver glass. I shuddered, my body rolling with pain. I had some doubt that I was seeing things properly. That perhaps the pain was going to my head and making me see and hear things that weren't there. "Am I hallucinating?"

The skull inside was no longer just a skull—no longer a bit of brown bone bolted to the bottom of a silver glass jar. It was—well, "alive" isn't the right word, is it? But it was back. Here. Flaring flashing, psychedelic, nauseating shades of green.

"_I don't know_," it said. "_Am _I _the one hallucinating? When I left, you were the size of a normal girl, bar the hips the width of a two-seater sofa. Now I come back and…oh, Lucy, have you eaten George? Oh…oh no, don't tell me_." A pause. I gripped the bedpost so hard I felt shellac shave off beneath my fingernails. "_It was all those iced buns."_

"I'm pregnant, you dolt!" I shouted. "But not for very much longer, and no one else is he-owww!"

The skull performed an obscene expression of surprise involving a tongue and an eye socket. "_Good lord, how long have I been gone? You _are _going rather grey. What are you-forty, now? Fifty? I've forgotten how these things work."_

I groaned in response.

"Skull…" I clenched my teeth. The pain was fading, but still shuddering across my nerves. "Skull, this hurts."

"_Yes, I suppose it does. What did you expect? Kittens playing with butterflies?"_

"Help me!"

"_Maybe I could if you hadn't put me back in a jar!_"

"I didn't. George did." I hissed. "It's not like your old one. The vent's different. It'll let you out. Here!"

I lurched forward and hit the safety mechanism on top of the jar. Suddenly, the green mist had vanished, and in front of me, a wiry youth stood—now of much a same age as me, slim and casual of expression, standing in the non-existent space between my bed and the wall. 

Now that the pain had faded, a swelling of both relief and joy crowded into my chest. I was so happy to see the ghost. I had _missed_ it. Why? I'd never be able to tell you. Maybe the skull was right. Maybe there _was_ a certain amount of attachment disorder that came with being a Type Three and the only person who could Hear it. We would never be Marissa Fittes and her Ezekiel, but it was a close-run thing.

My hand loosened on the bedpost. The contraction had passed, but my muscles were still bunched, cramped, ready for the next one.

"_Is it all over?" _the skull asked, leaning half-into the windowsill. The ghost glanced casually at my feet. _"I don't _see_ any evidence that Skull Junior_ _has arrived."_

"Oh, she's _not_ going to be—"

_"You think it's a she, do you?"_

"What?"

_"Did a doctor tell you that?"_

"No, I—"

"_It's not a she," _the skull said, almost gently.

"You—you can see h-him?" I asked. My throat constricted. "Is he okay? Healthy?"

"_His essence is strong,_" the skull said. "_Very snuff-outable_."

"I could do without you plotting to murder my unborn child."

_"Sorry, habit. Yes, Lucy, heartbeat accounted for, fingers and toes blah blah blah. You could have waited a few hours and found out for yourself, but you were never very patient, were you? Ah, and here comes another contraction. Brace yourself."_

The ghost was right. I clenched the bedpost again, trying to remember what George had told me through the haze of pain. Something about frequency, and maybe something about calling the hospital. But I was fine, wasn't I? Women had babies at home all the time. I had Skull here now. It wasn't like I was going to die.

"_This is excellent!" _the skull shouted psychically across my physical cries. "_If you die, you'll be able to keep me company. Tell me, Lucy, what's the thing you carry about with you most? The thing to which you're so attached that you braved murderous relic-men and a fiery explosion to save it? The thing that, when you die and refuse to pass to the Other Side without Lockwood, you'll definitely be tied to?"_

I moaned and squeezed my eyes shut tight. Starbursts of red exploded behind my eyelids.

"_Granted, the jar is a bit cramped for two._"

"Why are you back?" I spat. "Why _now_?"

"_It certainly wasn't the welcome. Maybe it was you. I did always appreciate a good bout of pain and suffering. I could do with a bit more, actually. Who's the father? George?"_

Little tears of pain leaked from the corner of my eyes. "No!"

"_Don't tell me it's Kipps. He couldn't father children, not with those trousers."_

"If you have to ask," I gasped, "you haven't been paying attention."

The ghost's expression was one of feigned if nauseated surprise.

_"So it _is_ Lockwood's," _the skull said. "_Working hard for that Christmas bonus, then?"_

"We've…moved in together."

"_And yet you're in your old room. In labor. Oh, and with me. Where _is _hubby, then? Out on a job, having left his very pregnant wife at home without anyone to watch over her?"_

"We're not—it was a very interesting-oh, you're here, aren't you?!" The contraction faded with my sudden flare of anger. "If you're going to be here, you might as well help me."

"_With what? Boil some water, get some towels? I could blow things around the kitchen, but not sure you'd find my powers much help with this, Lucy." _

My eyes widened. There was a strange tinge to the ghost's voice. Almost a certain amount of fear.

"Do—do you think I should call an ambulance?" I asked. My own voice was weak. Shaking.

"_Yes_," the ghost said, an uncharacteristic flush coloring its slim, transparent face. "_Yes, I do think that might be a better idea_."

_#_

The paramedics didn't ask questions when they found me in the entryway—in those blissful four minutes between contractions—in fresh pajamas and with a moldering skull in a jar under my arm (the vent was half-closed—I didn't trust it _that _much). They only attached me to lots of things that beeped and hummed and carted me up into the back of a van. There was a bit of confusion when they asked me if I wanted them to ring someone, and I had to give them my keys so they could rush inside and scribble something on the dining room table. Then the doors were shut, the sirens were on, and we rushed toward the hospital.

After this point, the night seemed to divide itself in two: me, in agonizing pain without Lockwood; then, some hours later, me in agonizing pain _with_ him. I don't remember him arriving. I must have been screaming too much. The first I was aware of his presence was when his face appeared before me, paler and more terrified than I'd ever seen him. He was sweating inelegantly through his shirt.

He didn't chastise me; he didn't reprimand me for sending them away when I was obviously in labor. Instead, he scrambled to my side and held my hand.

"Hey, Luce," he said. "You got this."

He gave me that smile—you know the one. The smile that had got me into this trouble in the first place.

"I don't know if I do," I whispered, throat raw.

"Should be over anytime now," he said.

"And then he'll be out here," I said.

"He?" Lockwood said.

"The skull said it's a he."

"The skull's back?" Lockwood looked to my bedside table, did a double-take, returned his attention to me even paler than before. "Yes, the skull's back. Right. Are you ready to start pushing?"

"No."

"You are, Luce."

"I can't."

"You _can_."

The bones of his hand clicked. I was squeezing hard. Grinding words through my teeth.

"But what if I don't love him?"

Lockwood's dark eyes blinked at me, befuddlement plain on his face. "Why on earth would you think you won't love him?"

"My mother," I said. "This…business arrangement. You."

Lockwood blinked again, chin jerked back in disbelief.

"What have I done?" he asked.

"Not loved me."

Even as I said it, I knew it sounded ridiculous.

"Are you daft?" Lockwood's smile reappeared—for a brief moment, the pain vanished. He gazed down at me with soft, dark eyes, as if I weren't a sweaty, writhing, hospital-gowned, bloated figure who had mere seconds ago sounded like I was auditioning for the part of a camel in a Christmas nativity play. "If I had to choose to love only anyone in the world, Lucy Carlyle," Lockwood said, "it would be you-no contest, hands down, one hundred percent of the time. Of course I love you, you idiot. What makes you think I don't?"

I gulped. My vision slightly blurred. "You haven't told me."

"Haven't I?" Lockwood blushed, as if only just realizing. "Well, that was a bit thick, wasn't it?"

I smiled at him. He smiled at me. We both might have been crying, or sweating, or both. It was impossible to tell.

"_If you two are quite finished with your repulsively public display of affection,_" the skull butted in, "_I think it's time to push now, Lucy."_ The wall flashed a violent, lurid green and the pain crescendoed, felt like it might split me in two. "_And if someone could turn me to face the wall, they will be forever in my favor_."


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N: *announcer voice* **We are now arriving at Fluff Town Station. Alight here for Fluff Town.

**Chapter 9**

"I take it back," Lockwood said, staring in unblinking wonderment down at our son. "Stuff this family enterprise nonsense. He's not becoming an agent until he's at least thirty-five."

Baby Lockwood-Carlyle was only five hours old, and already, I knew I needn't have worried about loving him. Morning had come with fierce sunshine, but we had pulled the curtains closed; the hospital room was quiet and bathed in pale green other-glow. The skull had gone unusually quiet, either out of compassion or utter disgust, it was impossible to tell. Still, I appreciated the chance for a nap and to hold our son as often as my tired arms (and an eager Lockwood) could allow.

I watched Lockwood now, exhausted but quietly peaceful, as he sat at my bedside, the warm bundle of blankets and fresh baby clutched in his slim, strong arms. He had a strange expression on his face—a sort of intensity that I'd often seen when he was pressing back throngs of the dead—but softer. It was something tender and new.

"What should we call him?" Lockwood asked. He, too, was hoarse-spent and exhausted.

"I haven't the slightest idea," I replied.

A faint corona of green light spread from the bedside table.

"_Funny you should say that_," the skull said, "_because_ _I happen to have just remembered my name."_

I turned toward the jar. "Are you serious?" I asked. Lockwood's eyes didn't budge from the baby's face—he knew well enough who I was talking to, and the certain tone of voice I took on when the skull had claimed my attention for its own.

"_I am, actually. Would you like to know it?"_

I shuffled up in my blankets. My entire body screamed.

"Strangely, yes," I said. "I think I would."

The skull told me.

I frowned at it, thinking.

"You're sure?"

"_I think so."_

"I actually quite like that."

"What did it say?" Lockwood asked me, slipping his slim finger into the baby's tiny grasp.

"It told me its name," I said.

He looked up from our son, tired eyes widening in surprise. "Really? I thought it didn't remember."

"It said it does now."

"What is it?"

I passed the information on. I watched Lockwood ruminate on it, dark eyes thoughtful.

"I quite like that, too," he said.

We both stared down at our son, at his perfect, ugly, old-man face, his little toothless mouth, his fat little limbs.

"Does it suit him?"

"I…" The baby made an impossible, rubbery face. A terrible smell filled the room. "I think it actually does."

#

Time had changed a lot of things at 35 Portland Row.

I had often imagined what it must have been like for little Lockwood, with only his sister and his nanny for company. Then again, what it must have been like after he returned to his empty home to start Lockwood & Co.—those weeks before George joined him. The desolation. The loneliness. The dusty masks lining the walls; the photographs he'd packed into boxes in Jessica's room, shut away where he'd never have to see them again.

It was almost impossible to think of now.

Even Holly struggled to contain the new detritus in our lives. George, already proudly wearing the mantle of third parent, recorded milestones in notebooks and photo albums: first smile, first sneeze, first laugh (at Kipps, who had opened the cupboard door into his face—the boy obviously had an excellent sense of humor). We tried to keep the experiments to a minimum, but it was hard to keep baby and skull separate, and George was ecstatic when our son's eyes followed the skull's ghost across the room, proving he did have the gift of Sight, after all.

It reached a certain point of ridiculousness around the time when he was four months old. He'd been sleeping better, a few times even letting us doze through the night. Then he abruptly reversed his habits and wouldn't even gift us with a five-minute nap. We tried everything—ghost chimes, turning mobiles, singing (Flo had a surprisingly lovely voice). Still, nothing stopped the griping and fussing.

Until I propped the skull on the chest of drawers, went to grab a badly needed cup of tea, and returned to find my son fast asleep in his cot.

The skull grinned at me from its perch, its ghost-fog an almost soothing shade of green.

_"What can I say?" it said. "We're best buds."_

"I…" I swigged from my mug. "I'm wondering if it's too early to question his taste."

"_I had siblings," _the skull replied. "_I didn't _entirely_ hate them. I admit that this one isn't truly awful. But I also must point out that changing nappies isn't one of my supernatural powers_."

So that was that, then. A ghostly, repulsive night-light. It was disconcerting to have that view when you were soothing your son to sleep, but I was coming to the conclusion that new parents would do anything for a night of uninterrupted rest. After some time, even Lockwood didn't mind rocking our son in the ghostly other-glow of the dead and deranged.

One night, six months on, I stepped inside the nursery to find both father and son asleep; Lockwood tilted back, little face tucked into his neck, twin spills of hair dark as ink in the light of the ghost-jar. It was beautiful, and strangely soothing. I watched them for a while, propped up against the cot, thousands of eyes staring at me from the cartoon-ghost wallpaper that Holly had pasted to the walls.

"_What are you thinking?" _the skull asked me with unusual interest. "_That look on your face is giving me the creeps, which, believe me, is quite difficult to do."_

"Nothing," I said, a blush creeping up my neck. "I'm not thinking about anything."

_"Tell me you're not thinking about having another one."_

"Definitely not."

"_You sure about that?"_

"Yes."

"_You might want to re-consider_."

"Why?"

"_Oh, I don't know," _the skull said. "_No reason_."

Lockwood stirred. Spotted me. The baby made a noise and shifted in his arms, but quickly settled back into a loose-limbed sleep.

"Hi, Luce," Lockwood said groggily.

"Hi," I said, grinning.

"Were you saying something?"

I shot the skull a look. It was making suggestive faces at me from its jar, mouthing things silently as though I'd knocked the lever shut.

"No," I said. "But dinner's ready."

"Oh." Lockwood looked down at our son, at me—our little family. "I might stay a little longer," he said.

"OK," I replied. "I'll bring it up to you."

He caught my hand, kissed it. "Thanks, Luce," he said. "Love you."

I left him, glowing. His kiss tingled on the back of my palm. I went down the stairs past the bubble-wrapped artifacts, the framed commendations, the burn marks from our experiments and cases gone wrong.

My heart stayed upstairs, waiting for my return.

Yes, 35 Portland Row had changed. In the past several years, it had seen death, blood, fire, agonizing pain, and an absolute _score_ of Lockwood's absolutely terrible ideas.

But this?

Well, I think he's had worse.


End file.
